All are
not taken; there are
left behind
Living
Beloveds, tender looks to bring,
And make the
daylight still a
happy thing,
And
tender voices, to make soft the wind:
But if it were not so- if I could find
No love in
all the world for comforting,
Nor any path but hollowly did ring
Where ‘
dust to dust’ the love from life
disjoined,
And if, before those sepulchers unmoving
I stood alone, (as some
forsaken lamb
Goes
bleating up the moors in weary dearth,)
Crying ‘Where are ye, O my loved and loving?’-
I know a
Voice would sound, ‘Daughter,
I AM.
Can I suffice in
HEAVEN and not for
earth?’
-
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
from
The Seraphim and other Poems 1838